


homecoming

by VHALMTYR



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Estrangement, Jack Zimmermann's Overdose, M/M, Poor Life Choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 07:16:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18441671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VHALMTYR/pseuds/VHALMTYR
Summary: Jack gets this look in his eye, sometimes, when he's about to shutter in on himself. Kent would never admit that he's gotten good at pinning him down, but he's learned to pick up on the reactions Jack will lean towards if he's going to shake apart.





	homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> hi! my hobbies include coming into fandoms brand-spankin' new about two years late, and taking an egregiously long time to write one fic. this started off as a conceptual 5+1, and i guess you could still look at it that way if you wanted, but it's more of an attempt at getting kent's voice right than anything else. any mistakes are my own, and i realize this is not super concrete, but i'm just working on getting my feet under me right now.
> 
> trigger warning for mentions of jack's overdose! it's just a paragraph, but it starts at "Jack is laying right there" and ends by "He dials the number" if you want to skip it!
> 
> enjoy!

Jack gets this look in his eye, sometimes, when he's about to shutter in on himself. Kent would never admit that he's gotten good at pinning him down, but he's learned to pick up on the reactions Jack will lean towards if he's going to shake apart.

The park is quiet. The pond has iced over, but not in any remarkable way. Not enough to even consider the thought of skating on, by any means. There is no birdsong. Just the blue-white hues of winter painted across a meek canvas, trees weighted down with ice and snow. It's a different kind of winter than the one he's used to. But it's nice to look at, and Jack -

Jack had swallowed down spit with red rimmed eyes. It'd been a bad play, and now it’s following him. That's just what he does: where Kent deconstructs his flaws in a way that will allow for improvement, Jack has the unfortunate habit of picking  _ himself  _ apart instead.

It's a nasty habit, Kent realizes, one he's glad he's never picked up. Maybe it's… selfish, but he knows Jack struggles in ways he can't say out loud. Kent's glad he doesn't have that heaped on top of everything else.

He just wants to help, he'd rationalized, waiting by the car they'd shared with the keys in his hand. He always drives, now. He's seen how Jack's knuckles will go white around the steering wheel if no one is paying close enough attention. And they're never apart, so… So. The park.

Jack's glazed expression is enough to make his heart thump in panic, pick up the pace. But he's not hyperventilating anymore, not gasping for breath in quick one twos.

He watches a squirrel skitter across the sheets of ice. One side to the other. Kent watches him.

“You feeling any better?”

Jack hums a noncommittal sound and shrugs one shoulder, as if to acquiesce to whatever Kent says instead of being honest. He’s not even sure if Jack heard what he said, but it’s not like that’s rare or anything these days. Kent doesn't push. If that's what he's willing to give, then that's what Kent will take.

Years later, he will realize that's his  _ hamartia _ : maybe he pushed in all the wrong places and didn’t apply pressure when he really needed to. How could he have known?

_ I miss you, _ he thinks, and doesn't know why, because Jack is sitting right there. Close enough to touch, and miles away.

 

A piece of the story is all Kent can ever get, even from himself: Jack is laying right there, on the bathroom floor, head next to the edge of the base of the toilet. The tile's slick with what could be bile. And there's the bottle of pills. Atomic tangerine. A strangely-hued nondescript bottle of something. His stomach twists.

He dials the number. Watch them load Jack into the ambulance. Calls Alicia, who calls Bob. Drives himself to the hospital and stays later than he should, in spite of Bob's insistence that he should get some rest. The draft is tomorrow, sure, but that's a comparative afterthought and nothing else.

They won't tell Kent anything. Alicia's mouth is set into a thin line, but her expression has been carefully wrangled into neutrality. Bob looks tired and sad, a disproportionate blend of the two somehow.  _ Tell him I'll miss him tomorrow,  _ he says, because he's not stupid. There are two ways this goes. Neither ends with Jack sitting next to Kent tomorrow, nervously waiting to hear his name, all the stars in his eyes.

Kent goes back to the hotel alone. Kent goes first in the draft alone, but that's how it has to be. Even if it shouldn't be him. Kent goes to Las Vegas alone. Kent calls his mother. She doesn't pick up. Kent calls Bob and Alicia. They don't pick up. Kent calls Jack. Dial tone. 

Kent goes. Kent is alone.

 

Jack's phone goes straight to voicemail six times. Then the number is out of commission for a while. Then he starts getting transferred to what he imagines is a nice old lady named Gertrude who doesn't understand how cell phones work, because when someone  _ finally  _ picks up, all Kent hears is a squawked “what?” before the line goes dead.

He stops calling after that, embittered by something ugly he doesn't want to give a name to. Fine, he thinks, message received.

It's never that simple, but Kent would rather pretend it is than look his feelings in the face. He never leaves a voicemail after the first or second time, but recites what he might say in his head over and over until he's memorized it to the syllable, inflection.  _ Hey, Jack, it's Kent. Give me a call back when you can. I miss you. _

If he closes his eyes he can see what Jack's face might look like in the dark, illuminated by the blue glow of his phone. The twist of his mouth, the glassy look in his eyes. Is he still in the hospital? No. It's been too long. He'd be home by now.

_ Home _ . Kent's got himself a nice new apartment overlooking the Strip now that he's not staying with Jeff anymore. There are paltry decorations, scarce. He'd gotten a few house plants with Swoops on an IKEA run a few weeks ago, along with some identical-looking chic furniture. It's not exactly his style, but he's got to fill the empty space with something.  _ Anything. _

He's got a guest room, too, with a bed and nothing else. On the nights he's feeling close to losing his fucking mind he goes and lays down on the mattress, lets the coolness of the high thread-count sheets soothe him. It's never quite enough, but it's better than nothing.

It's stupid. Looking back, it's maybe the stupidest thing he's done. But they get the cup. They get the fucking thing and Kent's still able to feel the blood rushing in his ears, hear the thunderous roar of the crowd as he hefts it up and over his head. The sweat on his jersey, his neck, the way his hair had fallen into his eyes.

He still wonders if maybe this is what gladiators felt like after slaughtering their opponent, after seeing the approval from up on high. It had to be close, right? Had to be.

If Kent had ever considered going to college - and he didn't - he thinks he might have ended up in a place like this. The house looks ready to fall apart at any given moment, and it’s currently in the throes of one of the biggest parties Kent thinks he’s ever seen and not been a part of. Jack is in there.

A piece of the story: they meet outside, on the lawn, instead. Jack looks not-great but he definitely seems  _ better _ , but he’s looking at Kent with an indescribable something that is both familiar and not.

“Kenny-” Jack says, and then looks over his shoulder. Like he’s paranoid that something is going to happen just by standing on dead grass talking to his not-best-friend anymore. Like Kent is going to set something off. Kent knows how these first few years with the Aces have gone. He knows Jack isn’t entirely wrong. He’s been stumbling through it, weight of the franchise on his shoulders and all that bullshit, but this feels like the first time he might ever get to put his feet under him and stand straight-spined.

“You should go.”

Here’s the thing: Kent doesn’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t why he bought the plane ticket, rented the car, put on his nicest shirt, sought out the address. Maybe it had been more clearly definable up in the air, or all the way back in Vegas. He swallows. “I miss you.”

Jack doesn’t even crack a smile. And he’s good enough to know not to lie. It hurts. It hurts more than he’d been expecting. But if Kent knows how to do anything, it’s putting on a brave face. He takes his hat off, runs a hand through his hair, and gives Jack his best media smile. And then he turns around and buys a ticket back to Vegas, back to the desert, back to red dirt and cheatgrass.

It’s like there’s a pane of glass between them, he’ll realize later - like they’re living in two totally different worlds and whatever happened  _ before _ was just some awful, shitty fever dream.

 

“-you.”

“You always say that,” Jack replies, before pressing in so close to Kent he feels like he might shatter. There’s a hand at his waistline, long fingers plucking at the checkered white-blue fabric. It comes naturally to Kent to mirror his actions, slot his leg between Jack’s, close his eyes because he’s been waiting for this, and his heart is only hopeful, wishing, wanting.

Kissing Jack feels like a homecoming.

And then the door opens. And then Jack is far away again, blue eyes dotted with something distant, his walls go right back up. And then-

Kent reconciles that he might be doomed to  _ only _ ever quit while he’s ahead on the flight back home. No more of this bullshit, he decides, and for the most part, his body and brain see fit to follow the rules. It’s a line in the sand.

 

They don’t make it to the end of the playoffs. Which - fine. It just… sucks, really fucking hard, to make it so close to the finish line and to come in third or fourth. They cemented a place, though, and while it’s not enough for Kent, it’s enough for the rookies and even Jeff.  _ Can’t win ‘em all, right, Parser? _

There’s going to be a rolling of the heads soon, Kent knows that. Just thinking the names over, he’s almost entirely sure that Bukvić is going to get traded, coach might have mentioned that a week or so ago. He’s rolling prospective results and outcomes around in his head when his Uber pulls up to the Bunkhouse, and he makes sure to give a generous tip on account of the fact his driver didn’t say a word to him the whole way.

It’s tradition by now to go out and watch the Stanley Cup game at the ‘house, and while he’s not feeling his best tonight, Kent knows there are worse ways to spend an evening. Scraps meets him at the door with his phone in hand, and they go inside to their usual corner-spot with a bird’s eye-view of about six televisions.

Providence made it through, Kent knows. Jack made it happen. Good for him.  _ Good for him _ .

In the end, he doesn’t pay much attention to what’s happening on TV. He replies to some emails, nurses his drink, listens to Carly and Troy go over their glory day runs. Chirps them a bit, for being old as dirt, but not as harshly as he could, because Carly takes shit too fucking seriously sometimes and Kent doesn’t feel like opening that can of particular worms tonight. Strategizes a bit with Scraps about what to do with the kiddos come Wednesday, because Maisie and Arnold are frankly ahead of the rest of the team, and they need to learn how to pace themselves just a bit. Wunderkind, those two. At some point they move from the corner to the bar, but frankly, Kent can't wait to just go home.

The game ends. Falconers win. That’s  _ that _ _._ It wasn’t a bad game. He’s watched worse.

A piece of the story is all Kent ever gets.

Scraps hands him his phone. The world around Kent gets so small it feels like it could be condensed into a tiny little box. Like it’s just him and this image of Jack Zimmerman kissing his boyfriend on screen, nothing else. The strangest part, though, isn’t Carly saying something stupid over his shoulder or the half-assed scorn coming from a few of the guys. It’s that the pain Kent feels isn’t a sharp one that pushes all the air out of him. It’s a dull ache, just below the ribs, like one that’s going to rot him away from the inside out.

_ Jack  _ made  _ it _ _,_ he thinks, and not much else.

**Author's Note:**

> i'd love to write more of these two (or anything check please related, actually, because i am IN DEEP), so if you're feelin' froggy, i'd love some writing prompts over on [tumblr](http://vhalmtyr.tumblr.com/)! just chit chatting is also cool!
> 
> i also have a [twitter](http://twitter.com/VHALMTYR), but that's, you know, neither here nor there.
> 
> comments are appreciated, kudos are loved, but for the most part, i think you're just great! have a wonderful day!


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